When it comes to trailers, there’s green-band, red-band, and there’s, well, the new trailer for Neighbors, kindly embedded above for your viewing pleasure. For those keeping track of the running tally, this makes for the fourth proffered preview Universal has released to promote their upcoming raunchy comedy; unlike previous clips, at least one of which is very much not safe for work, this latest slice of bad behavior actually contains a surprising amount of new material, all of which happens to be calibrated to tickle your funny bone.
By now, you may already be well-acquainted with Neighbors‘ plot, in which married couple Mac and Kelly Radner (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, respectively) with a newborn baby find themselves on the back foot when a fraternity (led by Zac Efron) sets up shop right next door to them in their otherwise idyllic suburban oasis. That almost sounds like the set-up to a thriller, or perhaps a really terrible horror film, but with Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall) at the helm, that conflict instead becomes a breeding ground for seriously depraved behavior, unhinged college parties, and a merry war of pranks waged on both sides of the fence.
For more on that, check out the newly-released international red band trailer for the film (which is appropriately titled Bad Neighbours in certain non-U.S. markets):
We’ve only seen glimpses of how that fracas plays out on screen; so far, it’s clear that it involves a whole lot of airbags, lots of property damage, occasional displays of fireworks, and intimidation through impersonating Robert de Niro. (And Al Pacino. And Samuel L. Jackson. Clearly, these kids don’t really know their cinema all that well.) This fresh red band clip adds “home intrusion” to that list of tactics for engagement, not to mention “interrupting personal time” and a form of armed combat that can’t really be articulated in full detail here. Let’s just say it makes a certain moment in the “furry wall” sequence of Get Him to the Greek look kind of tame.
Neighbors has two wild cards in Rogen and Efron. The former had a great 2013 thanks to the critical and commercial success of This Is the End, but he still has his share of detractors; the latter, meanwhile, has had a rocky start in 2014 with That Awkward Moment, though that’s largely because of the quality of the film rather than his performance. But Rogen’s operating in a slightly different mode than normal here, so it appears, which might help bridge the divide between people who like his style and people who can’t stomach him, and Efron could be a good foil for the more veteran comic actor to bounce off of.
So, on the whole, they look like a good combination on paper. Early response to Neighbors (which played at this year’s SXSW festival) has been pretty positive, which just makes the wait for the picture’s opening day that much harder. We’ll find out if it lives up to hype in roughly a month.
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Neighbors opens on May 9th, 2014.
